Arabian Nights

Sanio Kurtesevic / Duse Productions
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Exploring the classic tales of One Thousand and One Nights, one story at a time. Each episode journeys deep into the magic, mystery, and timeless wisdom of these ancient stories brought to life through Richard F. Burton's landmark 1885 translation, the most truthful and comprehensive version ever written. All credit for this epic collection of tales in the English language goes to him.

  1. 1d ago

    15th Night: The Third Kalandar's Tale

    Night the Fifteenth: The Knife and the Water-Melon Ajib scales the Magnet Mountain and, guided by a mysterious voice in a dream, finds a brass bow and three enchanted arrows. He shoots the horseman from the dome, and the brass steed drops at his feet. The sea rises to the mountaintop, and a skiff of laton carries him ten days toward the Islands of Safety, on one condition: never name Allah. But when he sights land, joy overwhelms him, he cries out the name of God, and the skiff overturns and sinks. He swims ashore on a lonely island. There he watches slaves uncover a hidden trap-door beneath the earth, where a wealthy father has buried his beautiful son. Astrologers foretold the boy would die in his fifteenth year, slain by one Prince Ajib, fifty days after the horseman fell from the mountain. So Ajib, hidden in a tree, hears his own name spoken as the boy's death. He descends, conceals who he is, and swears to himself that he will never harm him. For thirty-nine days he serves the youth with tenderness: food, games, stories, songs. Affection takes root, and Ajib smiles at fate, certain the stars lied. But on the fortieth night, as he cuts a water-melon, his foot slips, and the knife buries itself in the boy's heart. The last of the forty dangerous days was not yet past. He had escaped the sea, the Ifrits, and the mountain, only to fulfill the prophecy with his own hand. A king's son cannot outrun his own name, and in these tales, fate always finds the hand it was promised to.

  2. Oct 19

    14th Night: The Second Kalandar's Tale

    Night the Fourteenth: The Fire That Conquers Fire The Second Kalandar's tale reaches its climax. The King's daughter summons the Ifrit, and their duel becomes a chain of transformations: lion and sword, serpent and scorpion, eagle and vulture, wolf and cat. The Ifrit hides as a worm inside a pomegranate, and when the fruit bursts, the princess, now a snow-white c**k, devours every scattered seed, except one, which rolls to the fountain and hides in the water. From that single overlooked grain the battle resumes as fish, then as living fire. The Ifrit burns to ashes, but his last sparks still strike: one destroys the Kalandar's eye, one scorches the King's face, and one kills the Castrato. The princess restores the ape to human form, but she is fatally wounded, for that hidden seed held the Jinni's life. A black spark climbs her body, she testifies to her faith, and she becomes ashes beside her enemy. The King mourns, builds a tomb over her, and banishes the Kalandar, who dons the black wool and wanders to Baghdad, weeping verses of patience and aloe. Then the Third Kalandar steps forward, promising a stranger tale, for he invited his own fate. He is Ajib, a king's son whose fleet is driven toward the Magnet Mountain, whose loadstone pulls every nail from every hull. The ships come apart, Ajib alone survives, and a stairway carved in stone leads him toward the brass horseman whose talisman holds the mountain's spell. One hidden seed can decide a life, and in these tales, deliverance and sacrifice always arrive together.

  3. Oct 12

    13th Night: The Tale of the Envier and the Envied & The Second Kalandar's Tale (continued)

    Our night holds two tales woven together. First, the Tale of the Envier and the Envied: a man eaten alive by his neighbor's success tries to destroy him, even pushing him down a ruined well. But the Jann rescue the holy man, who overhears their secret cure for a possessed princess, rises from the well, heals her, marries her, and becomes Wazir and finally Sultan. When he finds his old enemy standing in his path, he responds not with revenge but with gold, camels, and safe passage home. Mercy given freely, even to those who tried to kill you. The second thread carries the Second Kalandar deeper into ruin. Dragged back before the Ifrit, he and the captive lady each refuse to behead the other, communicating love through glances alone while the monster waits. She protects him to the end and pays with her life. Hoping for mercy, the Kalandar tells the Envier's tale, but the Ifrit is unmoved and turns him into an ape instead. Yet even in a baboon's body he retains his wit, dazzling a foreign king with seven styles of calligraphy and winning at chess, until the king's daughter, Sitt al-Husn, reveals the truth: this beast is an ensorcelled prince, and she knows the magic to free him.

    13th Night: The Tale of the Envier and the Envied & The Second Kalandar's Tale (continued)

  4. Oct 6

    12th Night: The First Kalandar's Tale (Part 2) & The Second Kalandar's Tale (Part 1)

    The prophecy will not be denied. In the conclusion of the First Kalandar's Tale, our dervish-narrator discovers that fate is patient and that no caution, no cleverness, and no burning rod of aloes can protect him from what was written in his stars. A wedding, a warning scrawled by unseen hands, and one terrible night in the chamber of his mutilated bride leave the Kalandar forever blind in his left eye and bound for further wonders. Then we meet the Second Kalandar, who swears his story is stranger still: a king's son, schooled in the thief's arts, whose skill at reading language and tracing footsteps earns him strange companions and a secret commission in a mysterious palace one that ends with a basin of water, a fish, and a voice from above.

    12th Night: The First Kalandar's Tale (Part 2) & The Second Kalandar's Tale (Part 1)

  5. Sep 28

    11th Night: The First Kalandar's Tale

    The sisters opened their mouths to explain themselves, and instead a stranger spoke first shaving his head, calling himself a Kalandar, begging for shelter with half a face and half a story. He was a prince once, he tells them, the son of a king, sailing an innocent voyage when the winds betrayed him to an island with a dome of copper and a pavilion of sandalwood, and a smoke-crested mansion with no master but forty staircases and no servants but supernatural birds. His companions warned him: open every door but the fortieth. Of course he opened the fortieth. What he found there was beautiful, and smell of ambergris, and a girl who warned him one hundred times of a creature behind the gate but pride is patient, and princes never believe the wild until it has them. He fled through smoke into a wandering brotherhood, and when he reached it he found his companions were not his equals: two were innocent. And the price of that mistake would be paid in his flesh. Shahrazad does not stop to comfort him she is already introducing the Second Kalandar, whose story begins with treachery and a princess riding a horse no one believed was magic. Continue the story that began at the dinner table. The King is leaning in. The dawn is coming. Are you? "She smiled at the shaven-headed man, and bid him begin again from the part where his eyes were whole."

    11th Night: The First Kalandar's Tale

  6. Sep 21

    10th Night: The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (Part 2)

    The porter has eaten his fill, and the price of dinner is about to come due. Inside the house of the three ladies, everything is backwards: the first weeps through song, the second is beaten with palm rods and faints, and the third dips bread in makkun so bitter it is called mustard then laps water with the tongue of a dog. The porter begs to ask questions and is forbidden, again and again, but three merchants dressed as dervishes and three one-eyed calenders arrive with the same hunger for answers and behind them, riding by night in disguise, comes the Commander of the Faithful himself, Harun al-Rashid, who pays in gold for the privilege of what the sisters are about to confess. Every scar in that house has a story, and tonight before the singing turns to sorrow again the sisters begin to tell them. Continue the story that began in Baghdad. The King is leaning in. The dawn is coming. Are you? "She lowered her voice, and the ladies began to speak. Outside, the first pale light crept toward the Tigris and did not arrive."

    10th Night: The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (Part 2)

  7. Sep 14

    9th Night: The Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince (conclusion) & The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (Part 1)

    The bird flew home, but the enchantress was not finished. A curse broken is not always a curse ended and the stepmother still has one last transformation in her. As dawn closes in on the prince's tale, Shahrazad opens a door in Baghdad instead: a porter carrying a single basket, three mysterious ladies, and a house with a golden rule speak not of what does not concern you. Someone, of course, will break it. The King is leaning in. The dawn is coming. Are you? "Her voice fell to a whisper as the first pale light crept across the courtyard. The tale continued. It had to."

    9th Night: The Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince (conclusion) & The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (Part 1)

  8. Sep 7

    8th Night: The Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince (Part 2)

    Morning has come and gone but the story did not end. A prince cursed by his stepmother wakes each day in a different skin, and the doors of his own palace are closed to him. As the old man pursues the truth of the river, and the enchantment tightens, the night grows shorter and Shahrazad must race the dawn to hold the tale's most dangerous secret for one more sunrise. Continue the story that began in Part 1. The King is leaning in. The dawn is coming. Are you? "Lapsed into silence, she watched the sky lighten. One night ended. A thousand stretched before her."

    8th Night: The Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince (Part 2)
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About

Exploring the classic tales of One Thousand and One Nights, one story at a time. Each episode journeys deep into the magic, mystery, and timeless wisdom of these ancient stories brought to life through Richard F. Burton's landmark 1885 translation, the most truthful and comprehensive version ever written. All credit for this epic collection of tales in the English language goes to him.

Information

  • Creator
    Sanio Kurtesevic / Duse Productions
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Sanio Kurtesevic / Duse Productions
  • Show Website
    Arabian Nights